Word processing programs such as Microsoft Corporation's WORD FOR WINDOWS include the capability to automatically spell check an entire document so that each word appearing in the document is compared against words in a dictionary file provided with the word processing program. During the spell check operation, if a word is found in the document that is not spelled the same as any entry in the dictionary file, the word is tagged as being possibly misspelled. A spell check dialog box is then opened that suggests alternative spellings and gives the user the option to either correct the apparent misspelling, add the word to the dictionary, ignore the specified occurrence of the word, or ignore all occurrences of the word in the document. Even though multiple documents may be open in the word processing program, only one document, i.e., the document that currently has the focus, is spell checked in response to the user initiating the spell check feature. The prior art does not provide any mechanism for initiating the spell checking of multiple documents with a single command.
Another type of editing operation implemented in word processing programs is finding text or characters specified by the user and optionally replacing each occurrence thereof with alternative text or characters entered by the user in a dialog box. Various other options may be provided the user in carrying out this operation, including searching up or down from the current location of the cursor in the document, searching the whole document, matching the case of the text or characters specified, finding whole words or partial words, using pattern matching, looking for words that sound like the word entered, or finding all word forms, regardless of suffix. The user is enabled to review each occurrence of the text or characters that is found and decide whether to replace that occurrence, or alternatively, may elect to replace all occurrences in the document without any review. However, once again, prior art word processing programs only permit the user to perform a search and replace operation on the currently active document--not on a plurality of documents at one time.
The limitation of the prior art word processing programs in permitting editing operations on only one document at a time is not a substantial problem for simple word processing operations. But, the limitation is much more restrictive when a user needs to process a plurality of documents or files at one time. One area in which the need to perform such editing operations on multiple files with one command arises is in the administration of a web site. A web site often needs to be treated as a single entity, because of the interlinked nature of the web page documents comprising the site. Thus, it is preferable to treat the web site as a single document for purposes of spell checking web pages and for carrying out find and replace operations.
The ability to perform such editing operations across all of the web page documents comprising a web site is important for several reasons. A web site is often created by a group of people who are the authors of the various web pages comprising the web site. To achieve some degree in uniformity and to minimize differences in spelling and word usage, it would clearly be desirable to enable a web site administrator to edit a plurality of files so that they use similar spelling and apply common terminology conventions. Because the prior art only allows such editing operations to be performed on a single document at a time, the prior art options for carrying out this task would force the user to manually open each document on the web site to perform the desired editing operation. Clearly, this method is likely to be too time consuming if applied to several hundred documents. Furthermore, the prior art does not enable a web site administrator to keep track of the web pages on which misspellings are identified or on which a find and replace action is implemented, other than by manually creating a list of such documents.
From the foregoing discussion, it will be apparent that there has been a need to provide a tool that enables a plurality of files or documents to be edited with one command. Such a tool should be extremely useful in administering a web site and for other applications in which multiple files are preferably treated as a single document for purposes of efficiently implementing editing operations such as spell checking and find/replace.